"Injun" in Chris Kyle's AMERICAN SNIPER

When American Sniper opened in theaters last week, I started to see reviews that pointed out Kyle's use of the word savage to describe Iraqis. That word has been used to describe American Indians. I wondered if Kyle made any connections between "savage" and American Indians in his book. The answer? Yes.

In his autobiography, Kyle uses "Injun" in two places. Here's what he said on page 267:

Or we would bump out 500 yards, six or eight hundred yards, going deep into Injun territory to look and wait for the bad guys.

And here's what he said on page 291:

Our missions would last for an overnight or two in Injun country.

See? He made connections between "savage" Iraqis and "savage" Indians. In his book, he used the word "savage" several times. Here's page 4 (the book uses caps as shown):

SAVAGE, DESPICABLE EVIL. THAT'S WHAT WE WERE FIGHTING in Iraq. That's why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy "savages." 

Later on that same page, he says that when people asked him how many he's killed:

The number is not important to me. I only wish I had killed more. Not for bragging rights, but because I believe the world is a better place without savages out there taking American lives.

On page 147:

THE BAD GUYS THE ENEMIES WE WERE FIGHTING WERE SAVAGE AND WELL-armed 

On page 173:

It was near a hospital the insurgents had converted into a headquarters before our assault, and even now the area seemed to be a magnet for savages.

On page 219:

I hated the damn savages I'd been fighting.

On page 228:

They turned around and saw a savage with a rocket launcher lying dead on the ground.

On page 244:

They had heard we were out there slaying a huge number of savages.

On page 284:

There was a savage on the roof of the house next door, looking down at the window from the roof there. 

On page 316:

"...after we killed enough of the savages out there," I told him. 

On page 338:

I'd have to wait until the savage who put him up to it appeared on the street.

Of course, Kyle is not the first person to equate American Indians with Iraqis. In 2008, Professor Steven Silliman of the University of Massachusetts did a study of the use of "Indian Country." His article, The "Old West" in the Middle East: U.S. Military Metaphors in Real and Imagined Indian Country includes a chart of how it was used in the Middle East, by media and soldiers.

And, anyone who has paid attention to the use of "savage" or "Injun" in children's literature will be able to list several books that use either word to dehumanize American Indians. Here's a few examples:

• Laura Ingalls Wilder used "savages" in her Little House on the Prairie.  
• Carol Ryrie Brink used "savages" in Caddie Woodlawn.
• Lois Lenski used "savage" in Indian Captive.
• Elizabeth George Speare used "savages" in Calico Captive and "savage" in Sign of the Beaver.
• Eoin Colfer used "savage Injun" in The Reluctant Assassin.

When we share books with the dehumanization of American Indians, do we inadvertently put people on that road to being able to dehumanize "other" in conflicts, be the conflict that takes place in war or on the streets of any country?

__________________
Update, 5:03 PM, January 26, 2015

In addition to the article I linked to above, please see the conclusion of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples History of the United States. Irony abounds within military activity. At one point in time, US soldiers dehumanized Native peoples so they could destroy us, our homelands, and our ways of life. Kyle's framing of Iraqis as savages is a present-day manifestation of that.

Dunbar-Ortiz documents the flip side of that stance, quoting Robert D. Kaplan, a military analyst who Foreign Policy magazine named as one of the top 100 global thinkers in 2011:

"It is a small but interesting fact that members of the 101st Airborne Division, in preparation for their parachute drop on D-Day, shaved themselves in Mohawk style and applied war paint on their faces."

She cites other instances of that sort of thing. Get her book, if you can from Teaching for Change. 

American Indians or Stereotypes of American Indians in HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer has stereotypes of American Indians in it. Tom Sawyer also has an Indian character who Twain calls "Injun Joe." On January 10, 2011 I wrote an extensive review of Tom Sawyer.

Today I'm taking a few minutes to note occurrences of "Indian" and "Injun" and "powwow" in Huckleberry Finn. Page numbers below are from the copy I read in Google Books. As you'll see, I'm not doing much analysis. This is more of an index of Indian/Injun for others who have read the book and are revisiting it, focusing on those two words.



 On page 17, Huck talks of how he and Tom would go to the cave and "powwow" over what they had done. Twain is using "powwow" to mean "talk about."

On page 20, the text reads that Huck

got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come.

Sweat like an Injun? As compared to who? I wonder if "sweat like an Injun" was a common saying then?


On page 60, Jim is reminding Huck that he (Huck) said he wouldn't tell on Jim for running away. Huck says in reply:

I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it. Honest Injun, I will. People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum, but that don't make no difference.

Injun is a slur, and "Honest Injun" Interesting that in a passage where we sympathize with Huck for his anti-slavery stance. On one hand, Twain is doing a good thing. With the other, he's poking at American Indians. I imagine someone arguing that he didn't know that he was denigrating Indians. What do you think?

On page 131, the text reads:

There was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of steam--and as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she came smashing straight through the raft.

"She" is another boat. I think Twain uses "powwow" here to mean "lot of people." He uses "powwow" again on page 166, where he writes "then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again..." In that use, I think he means noise generated by the boat itself.

On page 196, the text reads:

Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whopping and yelling like an Injun, and singing out: "Cler the track, thar. I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise." 

Boggs, we learn, is drunk, and that he is "the best-natured-est old fool in Arkansaw--never hurt nobody, drunk nor sober." In that scene, Boggs, "on the waw-path" is out to kill a lot of people. He draws on stereotypical ideas about Indians, but he would never hurt anyone. Does Twain mean for us to believe that Indians aren't hurt by those words? Course, he probably didn't think that a Native person would read at all.

On page 241, Joanna and Huck are talking with each other. She wonders if Huck has been telling her the truth:

"Honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?"
"Honest injun," says I.
"None of it at all?"
"None of it at all. Not a lie in it," says I. 

Beverly Clark, a colleague in children's literature, has a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Children's Literature, wherein she traces the first use of "Honest Injun" to Twain's Tom Sawyer, published in 1876. The phrase is still used, as demonstrated by former GOP chair Steele. It appears again in Huckleberry Finn on page 312.

On page 251, Twain writes that the undertaker "glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time..."  Again, it seems to me he's using it to indicate talking.

On page 280, "there was a rattling powwow" --- It could be noise or people talking.

On page 372, Tom and Huck are scheming to help Jim. Tom writes a letter, signing it from "Unknown Friend" that says that:

a desprate gang of cutthroats from over in the Indian Territory going to steal your runaway nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them.

The letter says that Unknown Friend is one of the cutthroats but that he's "got religgion" and wants to quit the gang. Historically, there were cutthroat gangs in Indian Territory. Many were tried in the courtroom of Isaac Parker, the man who came to be known as "the Hanging Judge."

On page 379, the text reads:

They'd had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making powwow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up...

As seen in earlier pages, Twain is using it to mean noise.

On page 388, farmers and their wives are talking about "niggers" who:

stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no telling how many times they didn't steal that; and flour, and candle, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming pan, and most a thousand things that I disremember now, and my new calico dress; and me and Silas and my Sid and tom on the constant watch day and night, as I was a-telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses and fools us, and not only fools us, but the Injun Territory robbers too, and actuly gets away with that nigger safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very time!

In the letter (on page 372), Twain had Tom write "Indian Territory" but in the dialogue, the character says "Injun" instead.

I'll say briefly that most, if not all of Twain's use of Injun/Indian/powwow are examples of racially inflected language.

An American Indian perspective on changing "Injun" to "Indian" in TOM SAWYER

On January 3rd, Publisher's Weekly carried an article called Upcoming NewSouth 'Huck Finn' Eliminates the 'N' Word. The article says that NewSouth Books is planning to release a version of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a single volume titled Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  The article also says that the editor, Alan Gribben, replaced "nigger" with "slave" and "injun" with "Indian."

I've received several emails, asking what I think of the change.

I imagine that I probably read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when I was in school, but I don't remember much. Waller Hastings (a colleague on child_lit) pointed to the lack of critical discussion of Twain's portrayals of Indians. News about the NewSouth book, and Waller's comment, too, prompted me to read (reread?) Tom Sawyer.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

(Note: Page numbers below correspond to the eBook copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that I read in Google books.) 

Some facts:

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was first published in 1875. 
• Two chapter titles include the phrase "Injun Joe."
• The phrase "honest injun" appears two times. 
• The phrase "Injun Joe" appears 33 times.
• The word "Indian" appears once.
• The word "Indians" appears twice.
• The word "powwow" appears once.
• The phrase "war-whoop" appears three times.

[Update, 1/12/2011: Unless otherwise noted, illustrations shown are from the 1980 printing by the University of California Press, edited by John C. Gerber, Paul Baender, and Terry Fitkins. It includes original illustrations by True E. Williams. Twain selected Williams to do the illustrations. Page 273 of the text quotes Twain as saying "Williams has made about 200 rattling pictures for it."

Summary and my comments.

Summary: The first Indian that Twain introduces readers to is an unnamed figure in Tom's imagination. This takes place in chapter eight on page 74. Tom has been rebuffed by the girl he's sweet on (Becky) and runs off to the woods. There, Tom thinks about running away to "join the Indians" where he'll "hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West." When he returns, he'll be with "a great Indian chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint." He'll go into Sunday-school "with a blood-curdling war-whoop."


Deb's comments: Tom's image reflects America's love/hate attitude towards American Indians. On one hand, we're admired and on the other, we're feared. Or----I should say---IMAGES of us are admired and feared. Tom wants to join Indians who (he imagines) are living the good life out west, hunting buffaloes. He is drawn to the warlike image, too, as he images going on the warpath with the Indians of his imagination. Tom dwells more on the aggressive warlike image of Indians in feathers and paint who utter sounds that terrorize courageous Christians and settlers. 

Summary: In the next chapter, Twain introduces the character, "Injun Joe."  Not counting the chapter titles in the table of contents, "Injun Joe" first appears in the story on page 84.

The scene is a graveyard. Tom and Huck are in the graveyard and hear voices. At first they're afraid, thinking the voices belong to devils but they see that the voices belong to three men, Dr. Robinson, Muff Potter, and, "Injun Joe." The doctor has hired Potter and "Injun Joe" to dig up a body. (We aren't told why the doctor needed this body, but the Report of the geological survey of the State of Missouri says that that near Hannibal is a cave where a "Dr. McDowell deposited a relative's corpse to see if it would petrify" (p. 36). The book was published by Bureau of Geology and Mines in 1874.)

Once the body is above ground and wrapped in a blanket, Potter and "Injun Joe" ask for more money. The doctor says he's already paid them, but Potter and "Injun Joe" want more. "Injun Joe" approaches the doctor, saying:

"Five years ago you drove me away from your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for nothing. And now I've got  you, and you got to settle, you know!" (p. 85)

A fight ensues, during which "Injun Joe," with Potter's knife in hand, goes

"...creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity."(p. 86)

The doctor hits Potter, knocking him out and to the ground. Then,

"...the half-breed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man's breast." (p. 86)

The doctor dies and the "half-breed" mutters

"That score is settled--damn you." (p. 86)

"Injun Joe" robs the body and then puts the knife into Potter's hand. When Potter regains consciousness, "Injun Joe" asks Potter why he killed the doctor. Potter can't recall doing it, so Joe (throughout this conversation, Potter calls him Joe, not "Injun Joe"). Joe describes how Potter killed the doctor. Potter begs "Joe" not to tell anyone, and he agrees to keep quiet. The two part ways. The text says that the "half-breed" watched Potter leave. His knife was left behind.


Deb's comments: As developed by Twain, "Injun Joe" is a vengeful, lying murderer who moves like a cat. In framing "Injun Joe" as animal-like, Twain is not alone. Authors then and now do it. A recent example is seen in James Crowley's Blackfeet characters who gnaw on bones (see section on chapter six). 

And, he's a half-breed whose Indian blood/identity is the reason he's a vengeful, lying murderer. 

He uses "Injun" (not "Indian") to describe himself. What, if any, backstory did Twain work up on him? Who did Twain imagine his parents to be? (In Why Mark Twain Murdered Injun Joe Carter Revard says "halfbreeds" were children of white fathers and Indian women, many of whom were prostitutes.) 

Did "Injun Joe" grow up in Hannibal? We know that he was poor and hungry and that five years prior to the murder, he had been poor and hungry enough to ask for a handout. According to Twain's preface, the book is set 30 or 40 years prior to its publication in 1876. A critical companion on SAWYER indicates that there was an Osage man named Indian Joe living in Hannibal. Twain used his name. 

Would it make a difference in how readers view "Injun Joe" if they read "Indian Joe" instead? I think not! He'd still be a vengeful, lying, half-breed murderer. In fact, replacing the derogatory "Injun" to the too-broad-but-not-derogatory "Indian" actually works to make the character even less sympathetic. Readers may not know what an "Injun" is, but they definitely know what an "Indian" is! Removing the slur without changing the character doesn't alleviate anything derogatory... It absolutely pins wicked evil behavior on Indians.

Summary: From their spot in the graveyard, Tom and Huck witnessed the murder. In chapter ten, they run off and wonder what to do.  They decide to stay quiet because

"That Injun devil wouldn't make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak 'bout this and they didn't hang him." (p. 91)

They go through an elaborate ritual, burying their written oath to remain quiet.

Deb's comments: Twain tacks on "devil" to "Injun Joe's" character. Other classic works of literature frame Indians as devils or engaged in "devilment" (see page 284 of Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE where the text reads "Mr. Scott said he didn't know why so many of those savages were coming together, if they didn't mean devilment." That text is followed by Mr. Scott saying "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Death will be precisely how Twain deals with his Indian character.)

Summary: The next day (in chapter 11), the body and Potter's knife are found. "Injun Joe" tells the townspeople that he saw Potter kill the doctor. Tom and Huck watch in disbelief as "the stony-hearted liar" (p. 100) talks.  The two boys expect God to strike the liar with lightning but nothing happens,

"for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that."  (p. 100)

"Injun Joe" repeats his lie at an inquest. Again, no lightning strikes him down, and so, Tom and Huck's fear that "Injun Joe" sold himself to the devil is confirmed.  They're fascinated with him and decide to watch him, night and day, in the hopes of actually seeing him with the devil. The townspeople are angry at "Injun Joe" for participating in the grave-digging and body-snatching, but are afraid of him and leave him be.    



Deb's comments: Earlier he was called a devil; now he's sold himself to the Satan, and not even God is willing to use his power against Satan... 



Summary: Worried over what he's seen, Tom feels low and dreary. In chapter 12, his aunt tries various remedies and then starts giving him "Pain-killer." Bored, Tom gives some to the cat, Peter, by prying the cats mouth open and pouring Pain-killer in it:

Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round an round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. (p. 107)

Deb's comment: Here, Twain is using the running-around-like-a-wild-Indian imagery, and, he's added the war-whooping sound to make sure the reader sees what he is imagining. 

Summary: Tom is better and heads on to school, wondering where Becky might be. Not seeing her, he goes inside the school house and then sees her pass by the gate:

...Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next instant he was out, and "going on" like an Indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing hand-springs, standing on his head--doing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if Becky Thatcher was noticing. (p.109)

She doesn't notice, so...

He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the school-house... (p. 110)

Becky rebuffs him, he's embarrassed, and sneaks off, crestfallen.

The next few chapters are about Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper, who've run off to an island where they play pirates. They get sick smoking cigarettes. When the boys don't return home, the townspeople think they drowned. At one point when Huck and Joe fall asleep, Tom takes off, headed home. Tom sneaks into his aunt's house and hears her, his brother, and Joe's mother lament the loss of the boys. He also hears when their funeral will be held. After they go to bed, Tom takes off again and returns to their camp on the island.

The boys swim and play, but start to feel lonely for home. When Huck and Joe decide to leave. Tom convinces them to stay by planning their return during the funeral (readers don't know the plan till it happens). That night a storm comes and soaks their camp. The next morning, the boys try to leave again, and Tom reminds them of the plan. They stay and decide to quit being pirates and "be Indians for a change" (p. 147):

...it was not long before they were stripped, and striped from head to toe with black mud, like so many zebras--all of them chiefs, of course--and then they went tearing through the woods to attack an English settlement.


By and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon each other from ambush with dreadful war-whoops, and killed and scalped each other by thousands. It was a gory day. Consequently it was an extremely satisfactory one.


They assembled in camp toward supper-time, hungry and happy; but now a difficulty arose--hostile Indians could not break the bread of hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There was no other process that ever they had heard of. Two of the savages almost wished they had remained pirates. However, there was no other way; so with much show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe and took their whiff as it passed, in due form.


And behold, they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had gained something; they found that they could now smoke a little without having to go and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough to be seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely to fool away this high promise for lack of effort. No, they practiced cautiously, after supper, with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. They were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would have been in the scalping and skinning of the Six Nations. We will leave them to smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use for them at present. (pp. 147-148)

Deb's comments: They play Indian much as Tom imagined it earlier in the book. Mud serves as paint. They attack, ambush, kill, and scalp. Because they'd gotten sick smoking cigarettes, they're reluctant to smoke tobacco again. But, they're Indians, and they've got to smoke the peace pipe. They smoke just a little. It doesn't make them sick, and, that's what makes them jubilant---more proud and happy, even, than if they had been scalping and skinning Indians of the Six Nations. 

Skinning Indians? Hmmm... What does Twain mean by that? Skinning Indians meant taking advantage of them. Is that what Twain meant? Or did he mean literally skinning Indians? 

And what is Twain doing with the whole smoking theme? Did he own stock in tobacco?! Did he want boys to know that they should not be afraid to smoke if, on their first try, it made them sick?

Summary: The boys return home in the midst of the funeral service. They are greeted with joy. Summer comes and school is out. Potter's trial is about to take place. Tom talks with Huck, asking him if there is anyone who could force him to talk. Huck says:

"Get me to tell? Why, if I wanted that half-breed devil to drownd me they could get me to tell. They ain't no different way." (p. 190)

Deb's comment: Clearly, Huck is afraid "Injun Joe" will kill him. 


Summary: The two boys swear again to each other to keep quiet, but they feel bad for Potter, knowing he is innocent and that the lie told by "Injun Joe" is the only evidence against him. Everyone gathers at the courthouse. "Injun Joe" is there, too. To almost everyone's surprise (readers learn later that, feeling guilty, Tom met with Potter's lawyer the night before), Tom is called to the stand and is asked where he was that night. Tom glances at "Injun Joe" and after a few minutes, says that he was in the graveyard and starts testifying. When he gets to the part about "Injun Joe" jumping up with the knife,

Crash! Quick as lightening the half-breed sprang for a window, tore his way through all opposers, and was gone! (p. 197)

Tom is a hero to the townspeople. Both Tom and Huck are afraid (Tom has bad dreams), now that "Injun Joe" is on the loose. Huck is glad he didn't have to testify. He's afraid, though, that it'll come out that he, too, was a witness to the murder.

In chapter 25, Tom and Huck embark on another adventure: hunting for buried treasure. They dig in several places. Finding nothing, they head to Cardiff Hill, the location of a haunted house. They go inside to look around. While inside they hear voices of men approaching the house. One of them is "Injun Joe." He and the other man talk about their "dangerous" plans. They've got silver coins with them that they decide to bury before they leave, returning for it later.  "Injun Joe" remembers seeing a pick (it is Tom's pick) and uses it to dig. He notices fresh dirt on it. As he's digging, he finds a box of gold coins.

Tom and Huck happily consider all the money they'll have once the two men leave the house. But, the two men decide not to leave the silver or gold there, but to hide it "under the cross" in "Injun Joe's" "Number Two" den.

"Injun Joe's" companion tells him they have enough money and don't need to do that other job, but with "a wicked light" in his eyes, "Injun Joe" says its not about robbery, it's about revenge.  The men leave, and the boys leave, too.

The next day Tom and Huck plan to find Number Two den. In chapter 29, Huck follows two men who have the box of gold. They go to Widow Douglas's house. Listening to them talk, Huck learns that her husband was a justice of the peace who had judged "Injun Joe" to be a vagrant and

...had me horsewhipped! ---horsewhipped in front of the jail, like a nigger! ---with all the town looking on! HORSEWHIPPED! --do you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But I'll take it out on her." (p. 236)

His companion tells him not to kill her. "Injun Joe" replies:

"Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill him if he was here; but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't kill her--both! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils--you notch her ears like a sow!"


"By God, that's--"

"Keep your opinion to yourself! It will be safest for you. I'll tie her to the bed. If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? I'll not cry, if she does. My friend, you'll help in this thing--for my sake--that's why you're here--I mightn't be able alone. If you flinch, I'll kill you. Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll kill her--and then I reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this business." (pp. 236-237)

Deb's comment:  At the widow's house, readers learn that "Injun Joe" is not just a thieving, lying murderer. He's also racist and barbaric. Racist because he was humiliated at being treated "like a nigger" in front of everyone, and barbaric because he plans to torture and horribly mutilate the widow. 

 At this point in the book, Twain makes "Injun Joe" even more despicable. Now he's not only a liar, a thief, and a murder. He's racist and barbaric, too. 



Summary: Huck races for help, stopping at the Welshman's house to tell him that two men are planning to hurt the widow. Huck goes with the Welshman and his sons, who take their guns to rescue the widow. When he hears their guns fire, Huck runs home. The next morning (chapter 30), Huck goes to the Welshman's house and learns that they did not catch the men. The Welshman questions Huck, trying to get info from him about the two men. Huck, intent on keeping his own identity as a witness to the murder a secret, stumbles over his words trying to describe the two men. But the Welshman is on to him, presses him, and gets Huck to blurt out that it was "Injun Joe." The Welshman says:

"It's all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun! That's a different matter altogether." (p. 243)

Deb's comment: Again---if we replace "Injun" with "Indian," does it make a difference in how readers view that character? I think not! 


Summary: There is a plan to find the two men, but then everyone realizes Becky and Tom are missing. There is fear they're lost in a cave, and the townspeople spend three days searching for them.

In chapter 31, Tom and Becky are in the cave, lost. They discover that "Injun Joe" is also in the cave. In the next chapter, Tom and Becky are rescued and the cave entrance is sealed. Days pass. When Tom learns that the entrance to the cave is sealed off, he tells the judge that "Injun Joe" is in the cave. In chapter 33, the judge, Tom, and townspeople return to the cave and open the door.

Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground, dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now, which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast.



Injun Joe's bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The great foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had wrought no effect. (p. 267)

"Injun Joe" died a slow death. Knowing that it was useless to hack at the door with his knife, he ate candle stubs and bats. He had made a crude cup to collect water from drops that fell from a stalactite.


Deb's comments: Having just been lost in the cave, Tom feels some empathy for "Injun Joe" but is glad he's dead and safe from the "bloody-minded outcast." Twain gives readers a lot of details to help readers see the suffering he endured in his last days.  


Summary: "Injun Joe" was buried near the mouth of the cave.

[P]eople flocked there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all sorts of provisions,  and confessed that they had had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the hanging. (p. 269)

Deb's comments: What is that flaw in humanity, that wants to see grisly events like hangings? Why is witnessing such things "satisfying"?! People attended "Injun Joe's" funeral, not to mourn him, but to celebrate his death. 


Summary: Between finding the body and his funeral, some "sappy women" (p. 269) felt sympathy for "Injun Joe" and wanted the Governor to pardon him:

This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing---the petition to the Governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been largely signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of sappy women appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the Governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky waterworks. (p. 269)

Deb's comments: Why did Twain add that bit about the pardon? Did he imagine some of his readers might have sympathy for "Injun Joe"? Framing the signers of the petition as "sappy" and "weaklings" he may be asking his reader who they wish to be. Sappy weaklings? Not likely!

 

Summary: The day after the funeral, Tom and Huck go back to the cave and find the gold and silver. Though they're rich, they promise each other to follow through on their plans to become robbers.

Debbie's thoughts about "honest injun"...
The first use of "injun" in the story occurs on page 17, and it isn't in reference to a specific character.  By that point, we've already met Tom and Jim.  Tom's aunt Polly has punished him, setting him to whitewash a fence. As he works, he realizes a boy named Ben is nearby. He doesn't want Ben to tease him, so, Tom steps back, admires his work, adds another brush stroke, studies it, adds another, and so on, as though its art, not work. Ben asks if he can try it, but Tom says no, that only one boy in a thousand or two could do it the way it needs to be done. Ben asks again if he can do it, and Tom replies:

"Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly---well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it---"

The phrase "honest injun" came up about a year ago in U.S. politics when chair of the GOP used it. I did a bit of research on it then, and thought that Twain was the first to use to in print. Today, I found an older use of it...  It appeared in 1830 1880 in a collection of items called Very Funny, Not too Funny; Just Funny Enough. The correct year for Very Funny is 1880, not 1830. My colleagues in children's literature may be interested to know that Very Funny was also in an 1880 volume of St. Nicholas, the monthly magazine for children. Back to Tom Sawyer.... the phrase appears again on page 271.

It is a slur but I'm not sure how many people know it is derogatory. A lot of people don't know that "redskins" or "squaw" are derogatory. As I said earlier, I'm not sure what image comes to mind when a child hears the word "injun".  I'm certain that a specific (stereotypical, monolithic) image comes to a child's mind when he or she hears the word "Indian." 


My conclusions about the revised edition of Tom Sawyer?

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is not helped by changing "Injun" to "Indian."  Alan Gribben (the editor of the revised volume) says in the Introduction to the volume that:

The editor’s decision for this edition of Tom Sawyer has been to render the sixty-seven repetitions of the outcast’s name as “Indian Joe” to assist in retiring another antiquated and insulting word (even though the very name “Indian” itself commemorates a misnomer dating back to Columbus). But the substitution of a merely informative racial sobriquet salvages Twain’s ethnic innuendoes regarding the motivation for Indian Joe’s animosity toward the town’s residents. A total of seventeen miscellaneous usages of the I-word have similarly been altered in both novels. For the same reasons the eight references in Tom Sawyer to “half-breed” have been converted to “half-blood,” which is less disrespectful and has even taken on a degree of panache since J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005).

I've never used "I-word" for "Injun" and I don't know of any Native scholars who've used it either. If you've seen it used, please let me know (send email or submit a comment below).

Earlier in the introduction Gribben says that Twain didn't have to concern himself with African American or Native American readers because they were occupied with recovering from degradation and trying to survive and hence, too busy "to bother about objectionable vocabulary choices in two popular books." Perhaps, but I'd like to see evidence of that claim. In saying that, I think Gribben inadvertently says that we (remember, I'm a tribally enrolled American Indian) couldn't do both---survive and engage in literary study and political activism. I know that's not true. We've been doing both for literally hundreds of years. In 1829, for example, William Apess, a Pequot man, wrote A Son of the Forest in which he said:

[T]he great fear I entertained of my brethren was occasioned by the many stories I had heard of their cruelty toward the whites—how they were in the habit of killing and scalping men, women, and children. But the whites did not tell me that they were in a great majority of instances the aggressors—that they had imbrued their hands in the lifeblood of my brethren, driven them from their once peaceful and happy homes—that they introduced among them the fatal and exterminating diseases of civilized life. 

Gribben thinks changing "Injun" to "Indian" will make the book more likely to be used in schools. What schools, I wonder, does he mean? Does he think the change makes it more likely to be used in tribally-run schools? Or does he mean schools that don't have Native children in them?

His remarks (quoted above) indicate that he thinks that there's enough in the book for readers to understand the motivations for Joe's animosity. What do you think? Do you know of a teacher who is helping children see and understand the anti-Indian racism in the book?

I suppose there may be teachers who can do that, but my experience with other classics (like Little House on the Prairie) tells me otherwise.  Teachers are over-worked, underpaid, and they are not respected for the tremendous job they do, so please know that I'm not dumping on them.

Instead, I am pointing to an overall lack of critical engagement with the ways that American Indians are portrayed in books and movies and textbooks. That lack of engagement spans most universities, from their colleges of Education to their English departments, to their schools of Medicine.

I wouldn't use the old or new versions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in any elementary classroom. I might use it in a high school course in a unit that studies racism in literature...

What would you do? Do you know of teachers who teach the book? How do they address "injun" or "Indian"? Do you think they point out anything at all to counter the image generated by Twain?

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Note, 1:57 PM CST, Jan 10, 2012

This is a public thank-you to colleagues on child_lit who've been discussing SAWYER and FINN over the last week. I highly recommend the child_lit listserv to anyone interested in children's books. Subscribe to child_lit today.

I shared the link to this post on child_lit. Waller noted something I didn't catch. I pointed out that "Injun Joe" is described as cat-like and I pointed out that when Tom gives the cat some of the pain-killer, the cat races about wildly and does a war-whoop. I didn't connect the two incidents. Usually, the animal characteristics used to describe Indians are wolves. I wonder why Twain used cats? On another note, there's an animated Tom Sawyer in which "Injun Joe" is a bear.

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Update, 2:45 PM CST, March 16, 2011

This thank you is long overdue. On Jan 10, 2011, child_lit colleague Helen Schinske wrote that the correct date for Very Funny, Not Too Funny is 1880, not 1830. Thanks, Helen! I made the changes above and wanted to thank Helen for her research and expertise.

Michael Steele, "Honest Injun," and, "Injun" in children's books

When Harry Reid's remarks about Obama hit the news yesterday, Michael Steele (head of the Republican Party) said Reid ought to resign. When called out on his own language (Steele said "Honest Injun" on January 4), he said, at first, that he did not to apologize or step down from his own position. Now, he's issuing the classic "IF" I offended anyone..... (not)apology.

There's been a lot of spin about both men and what they said. With this post, I focus on the terms "Injun" and "Honest Injun."

Steel says his use of the phrase was not intended as a racial slur. I imagine a lot of people were surprised to learn that "injun" is derogatory.

Surprised, because, it is, after all, quite common. You can find "Injun" and "Honest Injun" in older books that are widely read today, like:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - published in 1876, where "evil is embodied in the treacherous figure of Injun Joe," (p. x of the intro to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a Signet Classic book published in 2002) and in the oath used several times by characters.

Seems to me, in my cursory study of the phrase, that it may have been coined by Twain. In the entry on "Injun," the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists Twain as the first person to use "Injun." It also lists several other noted writers who used "Honest Injun." Some are George Bernard Shaw in 1896 and James Joyce (in Ulysses) in 1922.

And you can find "Injun" in new books, like The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by Jacqueline Kelly, published in 2009. It appears twice in Kelly's book, on page 135 and 251. In both instances, it is used as an oath. Here's the relevant excerpt on page 135?

"Double-Injun-blood-brothers-swear-to-die-promise?"

"Double Injun."

"It doesn't count unless you say the whole thing," he said.

"Saaaam."

"Okay, okay, okay. But say it, huh?"

"Double Injun blood brothers swear to die," I said. "Now leave me alone."

Kelly used it again on page 251:

She swore the deepest double-Injun-blood-brothers oath for me.

I have not read Kelly's book, so I have no idea what the two characters in the exchange are talking about. The novel is set in 1899 and the oath was in use by then. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is getting a lot of buzz this year. There's a lot of people hoping it'll get one of the top prizes (the Newberry Medal).

Given that attention, I hope that teachers are taking the opportunity to talk with students about that word, "Injun." I wonder if Steele's schoolteachers used Holling C. Holling's Paddle-to-the-Sea? Published in 1941, it was awarded a Caldecott Honor Medal. In Holling's book, a toy Indian in a toy canoe is put into the water. It makes its way downriver, and ends up in Lake Superior, where a fisherman catches it (page 23):

'Best catch in weeks!" one man was saying. 'And that's not all---look! we're even netting red Injuns in canoes!

I've also come across the word "Injun" in The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Classic Stories compiled by Barbara M. Walker, published in 1989. It includes a recipe for "Rye'N'Injun, a kind of bread. "Rye'N'Injun" appears several times in Farmer Boy, published in 1953.  Walker says that bread is known today as Boston Brown Bread. On page 86, she writes

"Its history reaches back to the first New England colonists, whose only grains were the rye they brought from Europe and the corn they got from the Indians (hence "injun" for cornmeal).

Was "Injun" a word for cornmeal? I don't know, and I'm not going to take time right now to find out...  Staying on point with "Injun"...

It's in Elizabeth George Speare's Calico Captive, and Lois Lenski's Indian Captiv, The Story of Mary Jemison.  I understand it being used in historical fiction. It was a phrase used in the past, but not today, and it'd be terrific if, when they come across it, teachers would point out that "Injun" is a derogatory word.

It's in Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys.  You can find it in Lynne Reid Banks's The Key to the Indian. But, did Benjamin Franklin use the phrase, "Honest Injun," as suggested by Augusta Stevenson in her biography, Benjamin Franklin: Young Printer? 

Another children's book author uses it...  Joseph Bruchac. In his The Heart of a Chief, you'll find him pushing back on the use of it and other words. His protagonist, Chris, and his friends are at a football game. His friend is Anthony, or Tony, or Pizza. Here's the excerpt (p. 55):

People are going crazy on our side of the field. A bunch of kids are doing the tomahawk chop while others are patting their hands against their mouths to do phony war whoops.

The cheerleaders are doing cartwheels. They hold up their pom-poms and sing out together, "TONY, TONY, HE'S OUR MAN. IF HE CAN'T DO IT, NO ONE CAN!"

Just as I realize they are talking about Pizza--Anthony is his given name, which no one at Penacook ever uses--the big man in the New England Patriots jersey stands up, "Scalp 'em, Injun, scalp 'em!" he bellows. Other people take up his chant.

"SCALP 'EM, INJUN, SCALP 'EM"

I realize for the first time what it is like to be excited and depressed all at once. I look at my friends and see the same look on their faces that must be on mine. Should we laugh or cry?

In his book, Bruchac calls attention to a lot of words and to the mascot issue. For that reason alone, I encourage teachers and librarians to get and use his book, especially right now, in the wake of William Michael Steele's remarks. You might also want to talk with students about Native response to Steele. See "GOP leader uses racist term" by Rob Capriccioso in Indian Country Today on January 12, 2010 and  "Michael Steele's 'honest injun' comment sparks backlash", in the Chicago Tribune on January 7, 2010.